Environmental history: major themes and perspectives

Teacher(s)

This seminar offers Master 1 and Master 2 students a general introduction to environmental history. The interactions between human societies and their environments and the natural and constructed nature of the latter are central to the concerns of a research field that has emerged in the last few decades.

With no claim to be exhaustive, the seminar is a course presenting the approaches, methods and objects of environmental history. Sessions will be led by a succession of six specialists in this currently developing field.

Examples of session themes: technical command of nature; environment, production and consumption; environment and property; environmental history and general history; history and climate change; history and anthropology of nature; risks and disasters; resources and pollution; environmental justice; environmental history of the Communist and post-Communist worlds.

Students will be given reference texts for collective discussion and to prepare oral presentations.

The seminar is intended to be a place for learning about approaches as yet little known in France. It is open to all interested students, whatever their home establishment, but course credit is, if necessary, to be negotiated in advance with the relevant administration.